The sudden Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 has caused thousands of businesses to struggle financially or to shut down completely. For many of them, crowdfunding platforms have become the only means of obtaining funds in order to stay operational. To successfully communicate with their potential backers, project creators need to adjust their linguistic style accordingly. In this study, we analyze over 1200 crowdfunding project pitch narratives to see how the linguistic style has been affected by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. We then conduct an experiment in order to see how the changes in linguistic style affect customer engagement and funding intention. Our results suggest that the changes in linguistic style have a negative effect on funding intention.

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